Chris Black
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Chris Black is a historian, humanist, and author of Historical and multi-genre fiction who has an uncompromising approach to the realities of ordinary people in often violent and extraordinary circumstances from ancient Greece and Rome to the dark and insidious Nazi era of the 1920s and 1930s Germany and Europe.
Chris was born and grew up in South East London. From 18 to 21 he lived in France and travelled around Europe pursuing his interest in European history. Chris is gay and physically differently-abled and a wheelchair user, and often includes main characters of gay, differently-abled people in his work.
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Twisted Maze
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Action, Adventure, Thriller, Science Fiction
For 60 years, the “Founders” have been secretly infiltrating every aspect of the American government, law enforcement, military and judiciary, influencing government policy and biding their time for the day they can seize power, in the chaos that has followed the Covid Pandemic, the Founders believe that day has come... The Cranes thought they would be having just another family meal – but little did they know they would be brutally tortured and murdered by calculated killers. FBI Special Agent Dexter Quills is flown in from another state to investigate the crime and find out the truth behind it – was it an unprovoked crime perpetrated by outsiders, or was there a deeper, more insidious secret hiding closer to home…? The only surviving witness, Adam Crane, the youngest of the family, is in a deep coma. Dexter meets his Aunt, British SAS Colonel Elizabeth Brooks, quickly realising she knows more than she initially lets on… She informs him of a secret technology John Crane was developing, and that his treacherous eldest son, Richard. Armed with her insight into the case and steely attitude, they embark on a quest to find out the connection between the Crane Murders and a nuclear weapon which was covertly transported to Mexico eight years ago. Once there, they find much more than they'd bargained for, with agents from all over the world on their tail, driven by greed and desperate to silence Dexter and Elizabeth, as well as get their hands on John Crane’s invention. The plot thickens when they realise the terrorists’ scheme has devastating national implications, and things begin to get personal, culminating in both Dexter’s and Elizabeth’s children being dragged into their clutches. The fate of millions of Americans and the free world itself is in their hands, and in a violent race against time to prevent the greatest tragedy in American history, they must learn to overcome their personal weaknesses if they’re to succeed… Sample Twisted Maze |
Chameleon
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Political Thriller, Espionage, LGBT, Thriller
Set in the final years of the Weimar Republic, Chameleon is a fast paced (LGBT) themed thriller based around and inspired by factual events in Weimar Germany up to the Nazi seizure of power. Hitler has a secret he doesn’t want anybody to know about, a past, that if it becomes known, will destroy him within a grasp of power. The Nazi assassin and psychopath, Bruno Metz is dispatched with orders to recover the dossier and eliminate anybody who knows about it and Bruno leaves a trail of corpses in his wake in his pursuit of the dossier before it falls into the hands of the Führer’s enemies. But Bruno isn’t the only one looking for the dossier… Leutnant Kurt Eichhorn, “Chameleon,” is counterintelligence’s newest and youngest recruit, fresh from the War Academy. A Lutheran orphan, raised by Jewish benefactors, the Kaufmanns, Kurt is ardently opposed to the Nazis and sworn to vengeance after they murder Papa Kaufmann. Oberst Count von Wallenberg (Max); head of a covert Abwehr unit, is on a mission to prevent the Communists or the Nazis from seizing power in Germany. When he learns that a small-time Munich gangster Marcus Wolff has purchased the dossier and intends to hide it in his gay lover’s apartment, Kurt is sent in under cover to investigate and retrieve the dossier as soon as Marcus Wolff shows up. The house on Türkenstrasse, run by a lesbian opera singer, Fräulein George is no ordinary boarding house, it’s a residents are all gay artists. With orders to befriend Marcus Wolff’s lover, Xavier, who has a form of autism. But friendship soon turns to love… The pressure’s on, it’s only a matter of time before Bruno learns about Marcus Wolff, putting Kurt and his new friends and lover in grave danger. Kurt will have to confront his own fears and self-doubts, his own sense of guilt for betraying his friends and Xavier. But can he save them from Bruno Metz and his murderous henchmen? Who will find the dossier first? Who will survive the bloody ordeal? Sample Chameleon |
Chameleon, The Terror Begins
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Historical Fiction, Thriller
Often harrowing, “Death of a Nation” tells the story of Nazi prejudice, state oppression, espionage, Gestapo intrigues and the courageous German resistance to the Hitler and the Nazi regime. Well researched and based around, during and through real life events, the fiction is woven seamlessly into the facts in a rare insight into the secretive and brutal world of Himmler and Heydrich’s secret state police. A disturbing political thriller that skates the knife’s edge from beginning to end, giving a sense of just how dangerous it was to be Gay in Nazi Germany. No matter who you were. The fear oozes from Richard Wagner’s hideous ordeal at the hands of the Gestapo and in Dachau Concentration Camp. A well-researched novel. It’s been two years since Karl’s mission in Bavaria, (“Fatal Charades”) And Hitler has consolidated his power. After the Night of the Long Knives, the Gestapo begin their pogroms against the gay community, arresting thousands across the country, and being gay added a new dimension of terror to an already persecuted minority, driving them further underground. It doesn’t matter who you are, an Obergruppenführer in the Gestapo or an Oberleutnant in the Abwehr, if you’re gay, you’re grist to Himmler’s bone mill. Karl lives in a world full of secrets, international intrigues and murder and living a double life, keeping his sexuality hidden and his work as a military intelligence officer and a conspirator in the fledgling resistance movement, the “Orchestra” of army officers his resistance to the Nazis has not wavered and he will do whatever it takes to bring the Nazis down. Sample Chameleon, The Terror Begins |
NORAD's Ghost
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Science Fiction, Dystopian, LGBT, Action, Adventure
It’s 500 years after WWIII and he earth is poisoned with Carbon-14 and plutonium. Following the decade long night of nuclear winter and the Great Famines, what’s left of the human race is fragmented and much of the old world is nuclear wastelands inhabited by different factions, from the cannibalistic Ferals, who have reverted to savagery, to the Scavengers who pick among the ruins of the old world cities for useful items to barter with the Dusteaters, nomadic warlike factions who are at war with the despotic Utopians, the most technologically advanced and powerful of the human enclaves, who have forged a new civilisation that is controlled by an elite of fertile scientists and intelligentsia who live underground in Sub City, which sprawls beneath Silo City and Surfer Town, where the infertile topsiders called the Mudsurfers live and work for their troglodyte masters. Thundersky often wonders why he doesn’t get sick? All the topsiders get sick from the radiation and the cancers. So sick, that living to 35 is considered a grand old age. Only the Scholars live for longer. But the Scholars manufacture the medicinals that everybody needs to survive. Thundersky is different, not only is he immune from the radiation and cancers that have plagued the earth for 500 years, he’s also a genius and just 19, he has designed an antimatter impulse drive capable of achieving 50% the speed of light. It’s been months since Thundersky submitted his data and applied to the prestigious Tech Training Academy but has heard nothing since.Not all the Scholars are tyrants; some believe the exploitation of topsiders is cruel and wrong. The human experimentations conducted in the Utopian prisons on Dusteater terrorists is barbaric and inhuman. Among them, Grand High Scholar Blackstone Washington and High Scholar Blossom Flora, who for the past twenty years, following the purge of the geneticists and bioengineers have been protecting the “Genesis Child” from the Grand High Council who would kill him. But now people are getting suspicious and asking questions about the topsider who never gets sick, they must act quickly before his true identity is discovered and contrive to bring Thundersky into Sub City and alter his records with a little help from the ARTI-QS-Six-Zero-Two Quantum AI. Zim Steven, head of the SSS is soon suspicious of the new young genius and discovers that he is the Genesis Child, but before he can act, an ancient quantum system is activated at a secret location beneath the flooded ruins of Manhattan, and a countdown begins to unleash another thermonuclear holocaust upon our dying world and a race against time begins.Thundersky is selected to go to New York with an elite team of military tacticals to locate the NORAD system and deactivate it. Meanwhile, Zim Steven lays his plans to make certain that Thundersky and his companions never return to Silo City alive.After their transport drone is shot down by Dusteaters, Corporal Venus Jane and Fox, Thundersky and his best friend Tiger White are the only survivors, with just an armored vehicle. They are pursued by Dusteaters and the infamous Godders of Pennsylvania and a desperate battle for survival begins. While in the wilderness, the foursome make unlikely allies, and Thundersky falls in love with a handsome young Dusteater fighter, Reaper Bloodbuck.Utopia’s arch enemy, the queen of the Dusteaters, the Prophetess will reveal things to Thundersky’s that will unravel his life and everything he believes in, and soon, it’s realized that the humble Mudsurfer is far more powerful than even the Scholars could have imagined… Sample NORAD's Ghost |
Collegium, Brotherhood of Rogues
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Ancient Rome, War, Intrigue, Action, Adventure
Based around historically factual events. Egypt has fallen, Cleopatra and Antonius are dead by their own hands and Octavius Caesar is now the most powerful man on earth. But Caesar’s position is far from secure, with enemies in the Senate plotting against him and renegade legionaries still loyal to Antonius fermenting rebellion, among them, the renegade legate of the Third Aegyptus, Titus Eximius, who, sworn to topple the young tyrant, escapes from Egypt and turns to the Barbarians of Moesia to raise a Celtic army to invade Italy, financed by a vast treasure hidden by Marcus Antonius years ago. Titus has no idea that Caesar’s legions are secretly poised to conquer Moesia to secure the empire’s frontiers along the mighty Danube. Meanwhile, in Rome, an insidious group of senators and political enemies led by Fannius Caepio are plotting Caesar’s assassination, but they know they’re powerless without military assistance, and so, an alliance is made between the plotters and the Antonians, who are set on rekindling the bloody civil war. Sabinus, the ennobled blood son of the infamous and villainous Grassator (gangster) First Centurion of the Fifth Macedonica, Nepos Maximo, the Bastard of the Aventine. Sabinus is also the adopted son of the patrician adventurer Draco Cerialis, a one of Caesar’s best spies and commander of the “Irregulars,” a small band of elite Speculatorii (behind enemy lines special forces). After the fall of Egypt, Draco and the Irregulars are sent to hunt down and kill Titus Eximius and destroy his renegade legion. When Draco is killed in an ambush, Titus escapes to Byzantium. Sabinus vows vengeance against Titus who is responsible for Draco's death and Caesar’s spymaster, Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus puts Sabinus in command of the Irregulars and sends him to hunt Titus down and to find Antonius fabled “Syrian gold” (Antonius’s hidden war chest). Meanwhile, the Greek and Macedonian legions invade Moesia, and Sabinus with his half dozen Irregulars pursues Titus Eximius into war-torn Moesia, the reluctant commander of two cohorts of regular troops, battling their way through a formidable enemy to rendezvous with the Fifth Macedonica. Teutonius, with his officers has joined King Budorix of the Triballi, a warlike Moesian Celtic people who lay between the Fifth Macedonica and its prize – the fortified city of Ratiaria on the Danubius River. King Budorix has amassed a massive army of barbarian allies and intends to stop the Romans and drive them back to Macedonia and the two armies come face to face in a bloody and violent battle, upon which hangs the success or failure of the conquest and Sabinus’s prize, Titus Eximius and the eventual fight to the death between two bitter enemies, only one will survive… Sample Collegium, Brotherhood of Rogues |
Collegium, Blood of Fire
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Historical Fiction, Thriller, War
Based around historically factual events. Action, adventure, politics and intrigue. The conquest of Moesia is complete and Sabinus has killed the renegade legate, Titus Eximius and recovered a small portion of Marcus Antonius’s fabled war chest; but the pursuit of the remaining renegades, led by Popidius Kaeso and the rest of the gold continues into the Syrian desert, where Sabinus rescues a Roman orphan child Carthago, who has vital information about the renegades and their alliance with the senatorial conspiracy to murder Augustus and his inner circle, and to seize power, led by Senator Fannius Caepio. Carthago also has information about the renegades, and the mysterious men known only as The Procurator and Aureus. Sabinus (now a celebrated hero) returns to Rome with Carthago and the Irregulars, where he joins forces with his infamous father and his murderous Collegium of Rogues in pursuit of Kaeso and the renegades who have gone to ground in order to regroup, whilst Augustus is in Hispania waging war against the Cantabri. Sabinus, now commanding the most lethal Special Forces unit in Roman history, wastes no time in undermining the senatorial conspiracy in order to force Kaeso and the renegades out into the open. During their operations, they discover that the legate of the Ninth Hispania, engaged in operations in the Cantabrian mountains is part of the plot to murder Augustus and seize control of the legions in Hispania and Sabinus is dispatched urgently to Hispania to find the assassins, where he becomes actively embroiled in the Cantabrian war… Sabinus and the Rogues return to Rome as heroes. But the plotters against Augustus continues. But Caesar’s position is far from secure, with enemies in the Senate plotting against him and renegade legionaries still loyal to Antonius fermenting rebellion, among them, the renegade legate of the Third Aegyptus, Titus Eximius, who, sworn to topple the young tyrant, escapes from Egypt and turns to the Barbarians of Moesia to raise a Celtic army to invade Italy, financed by a vast treasure hidden by Marcus Antonius years ago. Titus has no idea that Caesar’s legions are secretly poised to conquer Moesia to secure the empire’s frontiers along the mighty Danube. Meanwhile, in Rome, an insidious group of senators and political enemies led by Fannius Caepio are plotting Caesar’s assassination, but they know they’re powerless without military assistance, and so, an alliance is made between the plotters and the Antonians, who are set on rekindling the bloody civil war. Sabinus, the ennobled blood son of the infamous and villainous Grassator (gangster) First Centurion of the Fifth Macedonica, Nepos Maximo, the Bastard of the Aventine. Sabinus is also the adopted son of the patrician adventurer Draco Cerialis, a one of Caesar’s best spies and commander of the “Irregulars,” a small band of elite Speculatorii (behind enemy lines special forces).After the fall of Egypt, Draco and the Irregulars are sent to hunt down and kill Titus Eximius and destroy his renegade legion. When Draco is killed in an ambush, Titus escapes to Byzantium. Sabinus vows vengeance against Titus who is responsible for Draco's death and Caesar’s spymaster, Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus puts Sabinus in command of the Irregulars and sends him to hunt Titus down and to find Antonius fabled “Syrian gold” (Antonius’s hidden war chest). Meanwhile, the Greek and Macedonian legions invade Moesia, and Sabinus with his half dozen Irregulars pursues Titus Eximius into war-torn Moesia, the reluctant commander of two cohorts of regular troops, battling their way through a formidable enemy to rendezvous with the Fifth Macedonica. Teutonius, with his officers has joined King Budorix of the Triballi, a warlike Moesian Celtic people who lay between the Fifth Macedonica and its prize – the fortified city of Ratiaria on the Danubius River. King Budorix has amassed a massive army of barbarian allies and intends to stop the Romans and drive them back to Macedonia and the two armies come face to face in a bloody and violent battle, upon which hangs the success or failure of the conquest and Sabinus’s prize, Titus Eximius and the eventual fight to the death between two bitter enemies, only one will survive… Sample Collegium, Blood of Fire |
